A H M Kishowar Hossain

The human rights system is premised on fundamental and universal values of human dignity and social justice. These articulated as principles of inter alia, "life, liberty and security of person" equality or nondiscrimination; and "freedom of opinion and expression". The preamble to the Universal Declaration proposes that human rights and dignity are self-evident, the "highest aspiration of the common people," and "the foundation of freedom, justice and peace." "Social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom", including the prevention of "barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind," and broadly speaking, individual and collective well-being, are considered to depend upon the "promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights."

Such values and principles are the foundation on which to build an understanding of women's reproductive and sexual rights as human rights. Reproductive rights include "the basic right of all couples and individuals to decide freely and responsibly the number, spacing and timing of their children and to have the information and means to do so. It also includes their right to make decisions concerning reproduction free of discrimination, coercion and violence as expressed in human rights documents." (UNFPA). Reproductive rights are somewhat different form sexual rights. "Sexual rights include the human right of women to have control over and decide freely and responsibly on maters related to their sexuality, including sexual and reproductive health, free of coercion, discrimination and violence." (UNFPA)

So reproductive and sexual rights are the constellations of legal and ethical principles that relate to an individual woman's ability to control what happens to her body and her person by protecting and respecting her ability to make and implement decisions about her reproduction and sexuality.

Although the origin of the term 'reproductive rights' may be traced to movements that initially surfaced in North America and Europe, similar yet distinct movements on behalf of women's reproductive health and rights rapidly formed during the early-to-mid 1980s in Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia and Africa.

Women's and gay and lesbian rights movements in countries where the Catholic Church is powerful-such as the Philippines, Brazil and Mexico- has struggled to legalise abortion, reduce maternal mortality and educate about safer sex and condom use. In Bangladesh, women's organisations have publicly countered brutal attacks o women accused by Islamic religious tribunals of transgressing sexual norms. In Africa and the Middle East, campaigns by women's groups against female genital mutilation (FGM) have focused both on the procedure's suppression of women's sexual pleasure and on its severe risks to their health. Women-of-colour organisations in the US, like women's groups in India, have vigorously opposed sterilisation abuse and the coercive or non-consensual promotion of long-acting contraceptives by family planning programs.

These practical campaigns and theoretical preconceptions nourished be forcefulness of the women's coalitions at the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna in 1993, the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo in 1994 and the Forth World Conference on Women (FWCW) in Beijing in 1995. Representing women from both global South and the North, those coalitions worked to replace the old population-and-family-planning discourse with a broad concept of reproductive and sexual health and rights that links sexual and reproductive freedom to women's human rights.

North-South feminists were pushing for a much broader approach later. That approach would integrate issues about abortion, contraception, childbearing and sexuality- the politics of body- into larger framework that emphasises 'the transformation of state social, demographic and economic development policies to incorporate women's social economic rights'

Now the question is what problems of turning reproductive and sexual rights into concrete realities in women's everyday lives are facing by feminist activists in all the world's regions? First, due to hegemonic capitalist markets and declining role of the state, the availability and quality of public health services continue to deteriorate. For women's reproductive ad sexual rights to be implemented in practice will require not only supportive laws and policies but also a thorough transformation of existing global, regional and national economic structures. Second, resurgent fundamentalisms in many countries, claiming ultimate authority over religious doctrine and moral values, actively challenge the recognition of reproductive and sexual freedom as a basic human right. Whether Christian, Hindu, Islamic, Buddhist or Jewish, these fundamentalist currents reinforce traditional patriarchal views of women's 'natural' subordination and the primacy of a male-dominated, procreative, hetero-sexual family form. Finally, these economic and political obstacles to realising reproductive and sexual rights are reinforced by the deep cultural and social roots of gender inequality. These obstacles can be eliminated and women have to take the responsibilities. Ultimately, political action can be effective only if masses of women believe in and own their rights. They must have a conviction that they are entitled to be treated as primary decision-makers over their own bodies and reproductive capacities.

The author is Assistant Professor, Department of Population Sciences, University of Dhaka.